6 ms·

People killed in terrorist attacks in 2017: Europe vs. Africa

45 points by mgalka 9y ago

AnimalMuppet 9y ago
In French. The graphic is pretty clear, though. Europe is in blue; Africa is in red.
barrkel 9y ago
There are over twice as many people in Africa as Europe, mind.
- x1798DE 9y ago
  The article says that there are more than 20x as many victims of terrorism in Africa, though...
  - barrkel 9y ago
    And there are about 6x as many victims of road accidents. And I guess almost every barometer of law and order will be worse in Africa; for tail events like terrorism, you'd expect more extreme differences.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
ars 9y ago
I can't read it, is Israel included? And if so, are they included under Europe of Africa? What about Egypt? What percent of the total is Egypt?
- Tech-Noir 9y ago
  Israel is not in Europe; nor is it in Africa.
  - praneshp 9y ago
    An interesting aside is that Israel football team is considered part of Europe for the Euros/World cup.
    - ucaetano 9y ago
      It isn't "considered" part of Europe, it just plays with European teams. Israel also takes part in Eurovision.
      - crispinb 9y ago
        > Israel also takes part in Eurovision So do we (Australia), but I'm sure we can't be in Europe because we don't have cycling lanes.
- vilhelm_s 9y ago
  There is a diagram of African deaths by country. Egypt had 297 deaths out of 2600, which is 11%.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
danso 9y ago
Reminds me of a project the NYT did a year ago, The Human Toll of Terror: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/07/27/world/human-toll-of-terror-attacks.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/07/27/world/human-t... https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/27/insider/terror-attacks-victims-reporting.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/27/insider/terror-attacks-vi... They decided during a "particularly intense spate of attacks back in March" to cover all of the victims as much as possible. This period included the 32 killed in Brussels, but that ended up being the only attack in the West. The rest were in Africa and Asia, and were generally barely covered by the world media. It took the NYT team, which looked like a couple dozen staffers and reporters, about a third of a year to publish the project. They were only able to find 222 of the 247 known victims -- some of the attacks took place in locales where local officials didn't collect the information themselves. It's a project I use as an example of "data journalism", the kind that's incredibly hard and constly to collect.
- andrepd 9y ago
  That was a very powerful piece of journalism, very well done indeed. The cliché that we should look past the numbers and into the people is only too true.
- fishcolorbrick 9y ago
  I think a William Gibson-ish take-away from that report is that there is an inverse relationship between how someone's death is covered and how difficult it is to find data about that person. Famous TV star from the 70s who hasn't done anything notable in 40 years dies of a heart attack? Easy mass of data and media available leads to a proliferation of heart-felt articles about that one time they were guest stars on Gilligan's Island. Kenyan political activist is tortured to death by Al-Shabaab? Aggregated into a statistic somewhere.
DanielleMolloy 9y ago
I don't understand the intention of this comparison. Does this make anything better? Is this considered surprising? Is anybody relieved now because the next vacation to Europe was about to be cancelled in fear of terror attacks? Is anybody "relieved" because when counting lost human souls Europe is not that badly affected after all (because counting bodies apparently is a thing)? Does this make any of these terror attacks less bad? Echo chamber fueled extremism is on the rise and affects people worldwide. Whoever has not realized how much terrorism is going on worldwide is advised to step out of their local news filter bubble. Wikipedia is maintaining some meticulous lists on terrorists incidents: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents
- andrepd 9y ago
  The point, as I'm sure you realise, is that the media coverage of attacks in Europe is tremendous, whereas nobody talks about the order of magnitude greater loss of life going on in poorer countries. This is objectively very wrong.
  - synicalx 9y ago
    Whether or not it's wrong, I'd say that it's entirely expected unfortunately. It's not particularly surprising if a religious extremist blows himself up in a country with very little capacity to stop him doing so, rampant conflict, and a high rate of such attacks. But when the same thing happens in Germany, a country that has a lot of capacity to stop such attacks, no internal conflict, and very low occurrence of such attacks - that's pretty surprising. News needs to be new and interesting, otherwise people just won't watch it. It's horrible really when you think about it, because it leans towards placing more value on European lives than African lives, but it just seems to be the result of what the public wants to see.
  - sintaxi 9y ago
    Europe is a mature civilization. Africa has arguably never established rule of law. That's the difference.
TaylorAlexander 9y ago
It makes me wonder: How can we ever expect to solve the biggest problems when we’re ignoring them?
- musage 9y ago
  They're not being ignored as much as being fueled. Just for starters, how many weapons used in Africa by dictators and terrorists are not made in Africa?
ekianjo 9y ago
Good points made but the little human-based infographic is just an horrible way to represent data.
- tmalsburg2 9y ago
  Why?
  - ekianjo 9y ago
    There is no clear reason for it to take so much space to represent so little data.
    - grantcox 9y ago
      Every one of those icons is a human life lost to a terrorist attack. This is both a tragedy without compare to family and neighbourhood, and one of the most appalling events in our modern world (people being murdered indiscriminately to further political aims). Trying to convey that weight is entirely the point of the infographic.
LARGEGALAXY 9y ago
This is disgusting propaganda of the highest order created to undermine and lessen the devastating effects mass-migration has caused in France and the rest of W. Europe over the past 10 years and more specifically the past 2. Hey look, our immigration policies unnecessarily led to the gruesome deaths of 80 innocent European people this year but on the bright side, it's much worse down there in Africa! - said the demoralized puppet.
burntrelish1273 9y ago
For the lazy (Google Translate): https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rts.ch%2Finfo%2Fmonde%2F9016433-le-terrorisme-tue-vingt-fois-plus-en-afrique-qu-en-europe.html&edit-text= https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...

45 points by mgalka 9y ago

AnimalMuppet 9y ago

In French. The graphic is pretty clear, though. Europe is in blue; Africa is in red.

barrkel 9y ago

There are over twice as many people in Africa as Europe, mind.

x1798DE 9y ago
The article says that there are more than 20x as many victims of terrorism in Africa, though...
- barrkel 9y ago
  And there are about 6x as many victims of road accidents. And I guess almost every barometer of law and order will be worse in Africa; for tail events like terrorism, you'd expect more extreme differences.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

ars 9y ago

I can't read it, is Israel included? And if so, are they included under Europe of Africa? What about Egypt? What percent of the total is Egypt?

Tech-Noir 9y ago
Israel is not in Europe; nor is it in Africa.
- praneshp 9y ago
  An interesting aside is that Israel football team is considered part of Europe for the Euros/World cup.
  - ucaetano 9y ago
    It isn't "considered" part of Europe, it just plays with European teams. Israel also takes part in Eurovision.
    - crispinb 9y ago
      > Israel also takes part in Eurovision So do we (Australia), but I'm sure we can't be in Europe because we don't have cycling lanes.
vilhelm_s 9y ago
There is a diagram of African deaths by country. Egypt had 297 deaths out of 2600, which is 11%.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

danso 9y ago

Reminds me of a project the NYT did a year ago, The Human Toll of Terror: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/07/27/world/human-toll-of-terror-attacks.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/07/27/world/human-t... https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/27/insider/terror-attacks-victims-reporting.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/27/insider/terror-attacks-vi... They decided during a "particularly intense spate of attacks back in March" to cover all of the victims as much as possible. This period included the 32 killed in Brussels, but that ended up being the only attack in the West. The rest were in Africa and Asia, and were generally barely covered by the world media. It took the NYT team, which looked like a couple dozen staffers and reporters, about a third of a year to publish the project. They were only able to find 222 of the 247 known victims -- some of the attacks took place in locales where local officials didn't collect the information themselves. It's a project I use as an example of "data journalism", the kind that's incredibly hard and constly to collect.

andrepd 9y ago
That was a very powerful piece of journalism, very well done indeed. The cliché that we should look past the numbers and into the people is only too true.
fishcolorbrick 9y ago
I think a William Gibson-ish take-away from that report is that there is an inverse relationship between how someone's death is covered and how difficult it is to find data about that person. Famous TV star from the 70s who hasn't done anything notable in 40 years dies of a heart attack? Easy mass of data and media available leads to a proliferation of heart-felt articles about that one time they were guest stars on Gilligan's Island. Kenyan political activist is tortured to death by Al-Shabaab? Aggregated into a statistic somewhere.

DanielleMolloy 9y ago

I don't understand the intention of this comparison. Does this make anything better? Is this considered surprising? Is anybody relieved now because the next vacation to Europe was about to be cancelled in fear of terror attacks? Is anybody "relieved" because when counting lost human souls Europe is not that badly affected after all (because counting bodies apparently is a thing)? Does this make any of these terror attacks less bad? Echo chamber fueled extremism is on the rise and affects people worldwide. Whoever has not realized how much terrorism is going on worldwide is advised to step out of their local news filter bubble. Wikipedia is maintaining some meticulous lists on terrorists incidents: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents

andrepd 9y ago
The point, as I'm sure you realise, is that the media coverage of attacks in Europe is tremendous, whereas nobody talks about the order of magnitude greater loss of life going on in poorer countries. This is objectively very wrong.
- synicalx 9y ago
  Whether or not it's wrong, I'd say that it's entirely expected unfortunately. It's not particularly surprising if a religious extremist blows himself up in a country with very little capacity to stop him doing so, rampant conflict, and a high rate of such attacks. But when the same thing happens in Germany, a country that has a lot of capacity to stop such attacks, no internal conflict, and very low occurrence of such attacks - that's pretty surprising. News needs to be new and interesting, otherwise people just won't watch it. It's horrible really when you think about it, because it leans towards placing more value on European lives than African lives, but it just seems to be the result of what the public wants to see.
- sintaxi 9y ago
  Europe is a mature civilization. Africa has arguably never established rule of law. That's the difference.

TaylorAlexander 9y ago

It makes me wonder: How can we ever expect to solve the biggest problems when we’re ignoring them?

musage 9y ago
They're not being ignored as much as being fueled. Just for starters, how many weapons used in Africa by dictators and terrorists are not made in Africa?

ekianjo 9y ago

Good points made but the little human-based infographic is just an horrible way to represent data.

tmalsburg2 9y ago
Why?
- ekianjo 9y ago
  There is no clear reason for it to take so much space to represent so little data.
  - grantcox 9y ago
    Every one of those icons is a human life lost to a terrorist attack. This is both a tragedy without compare to family and neighbourhood, and one of the most appalling events in our modern world (people being murdered indiscriminately to further political aims). Trying to convey that weight is entirely the point of the infographic.

LARGEGALAXY 9y ago

This is disgusting propaganda of the highest order created to undermine and lessen the devastating effects mass-migration has caused in France and the rest of W. Europe over the past 10 years and more specifically the past 2. Hey look, our immigration policies unnecessarily led to the gruesome deaths of 80 innocent European people this year but on the bright side, it's much worse down there in Africa! - said the demoralized puppet.

burntrelish1273 9y ago

For the lazy (Google Translate): https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rts.ch%2Finfo%2Fmonde%2F9016433-le-terrorisme-tue-vingt-fois-plus-en-afrique-qu-en-europe.html&edit-text= https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...